


A Light For The Future

by genarti



Series: ficlets and prompt-fic [2]
Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo, Steerswoman Series - Rosemary Kirstein
Genre: Crossover, Gen, this is for posterity so please be honest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-11
Updated: 2013-06-11
Packaged: 2017-12-14 15:14:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 449
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/838353
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/genarti/pseuds/genarti
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rowan finds the logbook of a long-ago steersman.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Light For The Future

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ryfkah](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ryfkah/gifts).



> This was originally meant to be a [three-sentence fic](http://archiveofourown.org/works/838334) for the prompt "Combeferre; Steerswoman. (Steersman? Or Steerswoman! UP TO YOU.)"
> 
> You may notice that it's not exactly three sentences long.

On the left-hand page was a drawing of a grass-flyer, delicately drawn, lovingly detailed, and labeled in a copyist's careful hand with the steersman's observations. He had asked many of the same questions Rowan had asked herself about their anatomy and behavior, and several questions she had not. "I record what I can now," began the words crowded beneath the insect, "for I may not have another opportunity after today's events unfold. I will charge Gavroche with bringing my logbooks to Captain Hugh; I pray he will miss the fight, but far more than any of our deaths I fear the thought of this logbook failing to reach the Archives. Here is everything I have learned of the plague afflicting our city, and of the wizard Louis's magic -- for both must be conquered, the evils of sickness and the despotism of wizards, regardless of whether they are connected in this case."

There followed five pages of facts and figures, hypotheses and tentative conclusions, and another six pages of what Rowan could only term a treatise. The steersman had included as well another passionate treatise against the wizards' rule, penned by his friend Enjolras. It was the product of a very different mind; Bel would like this Enjolras, she thought, with a jolt of wistfulness for her Outskirter friend. Rowan liked him too, but she was less deeply drawn to his rhetoric, however eloquent, than to Combeferre's scrupulous, melancholy, tidy, carefully reasoned laying-out of conclusions. Rowan gazed at the final page for a long while, picturing the steersman writing by candlelight, ordering his thoughts with the desperate focus of haste. Had he been alone, or surrounded by the friends he mentioned so often in this book?

She turned the page. Nothing further. Only a note, horribly bare after such an account, telling her that Steersman Combeferre had died in the attempted insurrection of Donner against the wizard Louis. A date was given -- early summer, nearly two hundred years ago. The rebellion had lasted only one day. Townsfolk informed Steerswoman Faris that Combeferre was buried with the rest of the rebels.

Rowan turned back to the drawing of the grass-flyer. She regarded its jointed legs and fine paired antennae, thinking of this long-ago steersman. He had fought a wizard and died. She had long known that she might suffer the same in her search for Slado; she could not afford to not factor that into her plans. Besides, a steerswoman faced truth. Still, she felt a strange fellowship with the steersman Combeferre. What other logbooks of his might be buried in Mira's disgrace of an Annex?

Reluctantly, she put the question aside, and turned to the next book in the stack.


End file.
